May 12, 2009

Notre Fame: Weiland Bullish on the Fighting Irish

It's not like Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland had a choice in all of this. Weiland's father is a former Notre Dame player and when the 41-year-old singer was growing up, Saturdays in the fall meant one thing: Fighting Irish football.

Weiland played quarterback in high school and entertained thoughts of one day playing for Notre Dame. Then he suffered a back injury entering his junior season and decided to give up sports to concentrate on music.

"I got called into the athletic director's office later that day and I got clustered by the athletic director, the varsity football coach and the varsity wrestling coach and they told me how I was going to ruin my life and I was letting everybody down," he said. "But, you know what, I think in the scheme of things I made the right choice and Notre Dame is not looking for 6 foot tall, 170-pound quarterbacks."

Michael Rothstein of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette interviewed Weiland about his love of the Fighting Irish. The interview is in two parts, here and here.

Weiland likes to attend at least one or two games a season, and if he's not in South Bend, he is hunkered down at home.

"For the most part, I kind of like to have a couple friends over and watch the game at my house. I preferred that to going to one of the Notre Dame clubs. I found that a little bit distracting. It was fun to drink the beer and that but I prefer to watch the games at home. I can analyze what's going on and it's a little bit easier to play armchair quarterback from my own armchair."

"It was back and forth and back and forth and back and forth with just minutes to go and seconds to go. Everybody thought that the Irish had won the game and it would have changed everything. But, you know, they sucked it up, they got lucky. Football, sports, comes down to sucking it up when you need to and luck and when the twain shall meet it's serendipity and they got a couple of those serendipitous moments in a row and beat us."